Rese​arch

Our primary research focus is investigating how the exchange of carbon, water and energy between the land surface and the atmosphere varies across ecological gradients in the Southwestern US. We use a tower-based micrometeorological technique called eddy covariance to directly measure these whole ecosystem fluxes. To interpret the fluxes measured by the tower, my lab also uses a variety of smaller scale approaches to quantify the contributions of individual ecosystem components (e.g. herbaceous plants, woody plants, soils, foliage, wood). We combine these data sources to develop a mechanistic understanding of the factors that control ecosystem processes such as carbon storage, water cycling and energy balance in semi-arid biomes across elevation and disturbance gradients.

The current research in my lab contributes to our ability to answer the following questions: